WASHINGTON — There is a storm gathering.

The voices raising alarms about President Trump’s temperament, steadiness and attitude toward the competing power centers of a democracy aren’t new; they date to his days as Candidate Trump. But the new authors of those arguments are making those concerns louder and more credible.

The consequences ahead — the velocity and direction of the storm — aren’t set, at least not yet. But the stakes are already pretty clear, and they could include Trump’s presidency.

Consider just the past week. 

Last Saturday, two former presidents, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican George W. Bush, spoke at Arizona Sen. John McCain’s memorial service with words that were hard to interpret as anything but castigation for the current occupant of the White House, though Trump’s name was never mentioned. The Washington establishment, past and present, was listening in the pews of the National Cathedral.

McCain, who was perhaps Trump’s most persistent critic within the GOP, “could not abide bigots and swaggering despots,” Bush declared.

Then Obama spoke.

“So much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse, can seem small and mean and petty, trafficking in bombast and insult, in phony controversies and manufactured outrage,” he said. “It is politics that pretends to be brave, but in fact is born of fear.”

On Tuesday, details from a explosive new book by journalist Bob Woodward, published in The Washington Post, described a “nervous breakdown” in the Trump administration as top aides maneuver to prevent the president from making disastrous and impulsive missteps.

And on Wednesday, there was jaw-dropping confirmation of the point Woodward made when an anonymous “senior administration official” wrote an op-ed in The New York Times describing himself or herself as a member of the internal resistance. “Many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations,” the official wrote.

There are at least two potential Constitutional crises that could follow – from one side, over questions about the president’s fitness for office, and from the other, over the notion of what Woodward calls “an administrative coup d’etat.”

Unelected officials, however well-meaning, stand on perilous legal ground when they presume on their own to undermine the decisions of a duly-elected president.

“TREASON?” Trump tweeted to his 54 million Twitter followers Wednesday evening.

This uproar doesn’t necessarily mean that congressional Republicans or others who have stayed in the president’s corner are about to speak out against him, or more seriously to consider Articles of Impeachment or the 25th Amendment, both ways to remove a president from power. Trump retains the solid support among Republican voters – of 89 percent of them in last week’s USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll.

He was characteristically defiant Thursday morning. “The Deep State and the Left, and their vehicle, the Fake News Media, are going Crazy – & they don’t know what to do,” he wrote, then ticked off what he sees as his greatest achievements: “The Economy is booming like never before, Jobs are at Historic Highs, soon TWO Supreme Court Justices & maybe Declassification to find Additional Corruption. Wow!”

The most piercing assault Trump now faces isn’t ideological, however. It’s not over his deregulatory agenda at government agencies or over the conservative stance of his Supreme Court nominee, although Brett Kavanaugh is facing a pounding from Democrats in Senate Judiciary Committee hearings.

This debate is much more personal, centering on Trump’s judgment and character, and it is much more unusual.

Previous presidents have faced questions about their fitness for office, including Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky investigation and Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. The clarity of Ronald Reagan’s thinking was a concern for some during his final days in office.

But the spectacle of a president’s own top aides, in the Woodward book and in daily news stories, describing a toxic workplace and an erratic boss is stunning. So is the need Vice President Mike Pence apparently felt to deny he was the op-ed’s author. “The Vice President puts his name on his Op-Eds,” Pence communications director Jarrod Agen said. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, traveling in India, told reporters, “It’s not mine.” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats issued a similar denial. 

More: Anonymous senior Trump official blasts president as erratic and amoral: ‘I am part of the resistance’

More: Mike Pence denies writing critical NYT essay about Trump amid ‘lodestar’ speculation

The furor sets the stage for whenever special counsel Robert Mueller delivers his report on whether the president’s campaign colluded with Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and whether the president tried to obstruct the investigation. It makes it harder for Trump to dismiss whatever Mueller concludes as fraudulent or unimportant.

It increases Mueller’s credibility. It erodes Trump’s. And it fuels the storm.

 

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People have been fasting for years to lose weight, but what if we told you that the longer you fast, the longer you can live?

The idea may be hard to stomach, but a new study by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) suggests that intermittent fasting could be the key to longevity. 

A group of scientists from the NIA, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana found that increasing time between meals improved the overall health of male mice and lengthened their lives compared to mice that ate more frequently. Perhaps even more surprisingly, the health benefits were seen regardless of what the mice ate or how many calories they consumed.

“This study showed that mice who ate one meal per day, and thus had the longest fasting period, seemed to have a longer lifespan and better outcomes for common age-related liver disease and metabolic disorders,” said NIA Director Richard J. Hodes, M.D.

He said that the “intriguing results” in the animal model deserve a closer look.

What could be learned?

The researchers suggest that the findings could translate into longer, healthier lives for people.

More: Universities increasingly cater to students’ diets with customizable menus

More: 1.4 billion people aren’t exercising, WHO reveals. Here’s why that’s a big problem

More: Study: Four out of five adults are at risk of early death

“Prolonged, daily fasting times could help improve health and survival for humans,” said the study’s lead author, Rafael de Cabo, Ph.D. “But scientists are working to find out how long you need to fast every day to see some of the benefits seen in the animals. That’s the next big question to answer.” 

To reach their conclusion, the experts studied 292 mice, separating them into two groups and closely monitoring the rodents’ diet. One batch was fed a low-fat and naturally-sourced diet. The other group’s diet was higher in protein and fiber.

Each of the two groups was then split into three sub-groups – one with access to food 24 hours a day and another with 30 percent fewer calories per day. The third group only had access to food once per day.

The results?

“We think what’s going on is when you stop eating for X-number of hours, your metabolism goes into standby mode. Your body fixes and removes all the garbage during this time,” de Cabo said. “When the next feeding comes, you are better prepared for the energy you’re about to consume.”

He said that when continuously eating, or snacking periodically throughout the day, your metabolism doesn’t have time to readjust or rest.

The scientist also said that there were no obvious negative side effects to the rodent fasting and that the mice who chowed down once a day lived up to 40 percent longer than the ones that had access to food around the clock.

According to de Cabo, the next steps for this research include expanding these findings to other strains of mice and other lab animal species using both sexes to identify the exact translation in humans. 

Follow Dalvin Brown on Twitter, @Dalvin_Brown

 

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Serena Williams says she still has a “really long way to go” to win a record-equalling 24th Grand Slam singles title at the US Open.

Williams plays Anastasija Sevastova in the semi-finals on Thursday and is the only major winner left in the draw.

A seventh US Open title would see the American equal Margaret Court’s Grand Slam haul but Williams has lost her last two semi-finals in New York.

Williams, 36, also lost to Angelique Kerber in this year’s Wimbledon final.

“I’d been a couple of steps away at the last Grand Slam, so I’m definitely not ahead of myself,” Williams said.

“I still know that no matter whether I’m in the semi-finals or the finals, I have a really long way to go to win.”

Williams is also aiming for a first Grand Slam title since giving birth to her daughter last year.

The semi-final, which starts at starts 0:00 BST on Friday, is Sevastova’s first in a Grand Slam semi-final and comes after her win over defending champion Sloane Stephens in the quarter-finals.

Sevastova retired from the sport in 2013 because of recurring injuries and spent two years studying leisure management before returning in 2015.

“It was an amazing journey, this three, four years,” the world number 18 said. “After I stop, at some point I will look at it and I will be proud of myself, for sure.

“I hope I will enjoy it, playing semi-finals. It’s not every day you play semi-finals of a Grand Slam.”

Back to ‘business’ for Osaka

The second semi-final sees 2017 runner-up Madison Keys face Japan’s Naomi Osaka, who is making her first appearance in a Grand Slam semi-final.

Osaka, who has long been tipped as a future star of the women’s game, is the first Japanese woman to reach the last four of a Grand Slam for 22 years.

“It means a lot but I was much more emotional for the quarters and now I feel like it’s sort of business again,” the 20-year-old said.

“Quarters was my mental goal, every time I played a Grand Slam.

“And then after I went into the quarters, I want to keep going, so I feel like I have to be focused again and keep trying really hard.”

Four are dead including the shooter and several injured in what dispatch called an “active shooter” situation in Downtown Cincinnati at the Fountain Square Fifth Third location.

The scene was announced as secure at about 9:15 a.m., but there were multiple victims in the area of 511 Walnut Street.

One victim was located at 5th and Walnut streets, according to police. Another victim was located inside the nearby Graeter’s ice cream shop.

Three men and one woman were transported to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, hospital officials said. One has died, two are in critical condition and one is in serious condition. Each suffered gunshot wounds, officials said.

Radio traffic indicated other victims may have been transported to Good Samaritan Hospital. 

Capt. Jeff Butler said no more victims will be brought to the UCMC emergency room.

Cincinnati City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld tweeted “multiple shot, and tragically there are fatalities.” He also said the gunman is suspected to be dead.

City Councilman Chris Seelbach also tweeted that two people are dead as a result of the shooting. He said one is the shooter. “The number of victims may increase to five,” he said.

Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac said the shooting took place in the loading dock and lobby of Fifth Third tower. Isaac said three or four police officers engaged the shooter, ending the threat.

“There’s something deeply sick at work here and we as a country need to work on it,” Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley said.

A witness to the shooting said there were at least three people injured in the shooting.

Leonard Cain was going back inside the bank when someone alerted him of the shooting. He said a woman was also walking into the bank and people tried to get her attention but she had headphones on.

“She walked in the door and he shot her,” Cain told The Enquirer.

Cain said he heard up to 15 shots fired.

Other witnesses said saw at least two people on stretchers being loaded into ambulances on 5th Street in front of Greater’s.

Zach Fritzhand, who works on the second floor of the Westin hotel building, said the people he saw on the stretchers were not moving.

“There was definitely a lot of blood involved,” he said.

Michael Richardson, who works in the Fifth Third Bank building, was just outside the main doors on Fountain Square, smoking a cigarette when he heard gunshots.

He saw a man firing a gun inside the bank lobby.

“I looked behind me and saw the guy – he shot and then he shot again. After that I started running. I went around to the north side of the building and sat down.”

Richardson, who works for Priority Installation, saw a police officer dragging a woman out of the bank lobby.

He said she was talking, but she was also bleeding, and “her shirt was red.”

No officers were injured, according to radio traffic and city officials.

The Cincinnati office of the FBI sent agents to the scene to assist Cincinnati police Thursday morning.

“Fountain Square and the surrounding area will be closed to foot traffic,” police said.

A reporter at the scene said two ambulances had already left the scene as of 9:30 a.m.

The incident at Fifth Third, with five apparent victims, makes it the 15th mass shooting (defined as having at least four victims) in the Cincinnati area since 2013.

The deadliest mass shooting locally of the past five years happened early on the morning of March 26, 2017, when two people were killed and 15 shot at the former Cameo nightclub in the East End.

Earlier this year, four people were shot on May 25 on Ross Avenue in East Price Hill after a dispute in a dice game.

With today’s victims, 90 people have been injured locally in mass shootings since 2013  with 11 fatalities and 79 wounded, according to an Enquirer analysis of data kept by Gunviolencearchive.org.

There were four active shooter incidents in Ohio in 2016 and 2017, when there were 50 nationwide.

Two of Ohio’s active shooter incidents were local.  They were:

• Dec. 20, 2017 – Isaiah Currie, 20, armed with two handguns, began shooting in the lobby of the psychiatric emergency services wing of the University of Cincinnati Medical Center in Corryville. The shooter struggled with and shot an unarmed security guard and fired several shots at a responding off-duty law enforcement officer working security nearby. No one was killed; one was wounded (an unarmed security guard). Currie committed suicide as additional law enforcement arrived.
• Feb. 29, 2016 – James “Austin” Hancock, 14, armed with a handgun, allegedly began shooting in the cafeteria of Madison Junior/Senior High School in Madison Township, Butler County. He shot two students before fleeing the building. No one was killed; four students were wounded (two from shrapnel). The shooter was apprehended near the school by law enforcement officers.

Follow Enquirer reporters covering the shooting on Twitter.

This is a breaking story and will be updated.

 

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WASHINGTON – The Department of Justice plans to announce charges Thursday against a North Korean spy in connection with a 2014 cyber attack Sony Pictures, according to the Washington Post. 

The Post report said Justice Department officials will charge Pak Jin Hyok, who conducted hacking on behalf of North Korea’s military intelligence agency, with the Sony attack. The story cited unnamed U.S. officials.

A Justice Department spokesman said Thursday he could not comment on the story. ABC News first reported the planned charges against North Korean nationals, saying U.S. authorities have accused them of being behind the both the Sony attack and the broader WannaCry ransomware attack last year.

The Trump administration concluded last year that North Korea was responsible, but then-Homeland Security Adviser Thomas Bossert suggested the U.S. had little recourse in the case.

“It’s not about holding a country accountable,” Bossert said last December. “We’re going to shame them for it.”

But Thursday’s planned action also reportedly includes new sanctions against North Korea, according to the Post. And the criminal charges against a North Korean government operative will surely be seen by Pyongyang as a more direct slap than Bossert’s public shaming strategy. 

The 2017 WannaCry attack crippled thousands of computers around the world with software that spread among Windows computers, particularly those using older operating systems. The malware infected machines, froze them, and then demanded a $300 ransom to be paid in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

The WannaCry attack hit more than 200,000 victims in 150 countries, most notably paralyzing more than 20 percent of hospitals in the United Kingdom.

“The attack was widespread and cost billions, and North Korea is directly responsible,” Bossert wrote in a December 2017 Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Soon after the attack, experts at the global cyber-security firm Symantec found that earlier versions of the WannaCry ransomware were found on computers that also bore evidence of the cyber tools used against Sony Pictures Entertainment, banks in Poland and Bangladesh’s central bank. All of those attacks were linked to North Korea.

In the 2014 attack on Sony, the United States accused North Korea of the company’s computers in retaliation for the creation of a comedy titled “The Interview” that was about a C.I.A. plot to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

Contributing: Melanie Eversley and Jane Onyanga-Omara. 

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The Uefa Nations League is about to start for England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Is it a complicated irrelevance, or, for some, their best route to Euro 2020?

Uefa’s 55 nations have been split into four tiers for the new competition – with League A the highest and League D the lowest. Each league has four groups within it, and offers the prospect of a second crack at European Championship qualification.

England have been placed in League A’s Group 4 with Spain, visitors to Wembley on Saturday, and Croatia.

Wales and the Republic of Ireland, drawn in League B’s Group 4 with Denmark, meet in Cardiff on Thursday for their first game in the competition.

Northern Ireland, also in League B, begin at home to Bosnia-Herzegovina on Saturday in Group 3, and will be up against Austria in their section too.

Scotland, placed in League C’s Group 1, open against Albania in Glasgow on Monday, before visiting Israel in October.

Not all of the nations competing will see the competition in the same way.

England, Wales and Northern Ireland might baulk at the idea of needing a back-door route to Euro 2020, given all three were at the finals in France in 2016. But would they all be entirely confident of finishing in the top two places in a five- or six-team group to earn qualification in the usual way?

The Scottish FA is being more circumspect. With its focus sharpened by Hampden hosting four Euro 2020 tournament matches, it is selling Uefa’s new competition – one which will effectively replace most international friendlies – to sceptical fans as a way of ending what would be a 22-year absence from major finals.

The reasoning? The fact that two of the bottom 31 teams in the 55-nation European rankings are now guaranteed qualifying slots.

The draw for the inaugural Uefa Nations League took place in Lausanne in January and is, according to Uefa’s head of competitions, “different, not complex”.

It is complex, though, isn’t it?

The detail becomes fiendishly complicated, but the basic structure of a competition that will be played in the “empty” seasons without a European Championship or World Cup is relatively straightforward.

The 55 European nations have been arranged into those four tiers, Leagues A to D, based on their ranking – the top 12, the next 12, etc – with each tier split into four groups of three or four teams.

The sides in each group will play home and away in a 10-week period between September and November of this year, with the team finishing top of each section being promoted to a higher tier and the nation finishing bottom dropping down one.

And, in a final flourish, the four nations who win the groups in the top tier will advance to a knockout finals next June to decide the Nations League winner.

“If you look at it you will realise that is the system of the domestic club leagues,” Giorgio Marchetti, Uefa’s head of competitions, told BBC Sport.

“It requires explanation and everyone to focus on it, but it is not particularly complicated I would say.”

This video produced by Uefa might help…

What about this being a back door to the Euros?

This is where things start to get a little bit tricky.

The actual qualification process for Euro 2020 has been simplified, with the top two nations in the 10 groups claiming a place in the finals.

The seedings will be determined by how teams performed in the preceding Nations League and the 10 fixtures will be wedged into an eight-month window from March-November 2019. So far, so familiar.

However, that leaves four places at the finals – which will be held in 12 host cities around the continent – still to be filled, which is where the fun starts.

Remember those Nations League groups? The four group winners in each tier will then play-off in March for a first crack at claiming one of those four vacant spots.

However, should a nation already have qualified, their place will go to the next highest-ranked team from their Nations League tier. To confuse things further, that will not necessarily be the runners-up in their group.

Furthermore, should there not be enough teams in one of the tiers… actually, let’s not confuse ourselves with that. Another Uefa video might help…

Could you ‘game’ the system, then?

As you may have deduced from that video, the structure of the play-offs means that one nation from each tier will claim a finals place. So one of Azerbaijan, Macedonia, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Latvia, the Faroe Islands, Luxembourg, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Liechtenstein, Malta, Andorra, Kosovo, San Marino or Gibraltar will qualify for a major tournament.

Likewise, Scotland are looking at League C and thinking that, as the third-highest ranked nation, they have a decent chance of winning their section before emerging from the four-team knockout play-off against, perhaps, Hungary, Slovenia and Romania.

All that might raise the question, then, whether it could be in some nations’ interests to strategically tumble down a tier with a couple of experimental team selections in the hope of securing a circuitous, but more forgiving, route to a major tournament.

It wouldn’t be the first time that teams have shown some street smarts around fixture scheduling.

With friendlies hitherto only garnering 40% of the Fifa ranking points that competitive games do, some nations have fathomed that they are better not playing exhibition matches at all. That way, they protect their ranking and reap the benefit when it comes to qualification draws.

Romania and Wales are among those who have been rumoured to have dabbled in such sly scheduling but the Nations League should end that practice.

“The more matches played in competition makes it all the better,” said Marchetti. “Clearly there is more harmonisation as all the teams will play roughly the same number of games, without a free choice of opponent.

“And these finals are not an add-on to the calendar. They are on dates that are currently on there. We are not asking more sacrifice of the players, they will simply play something else.”

So why else are we doing this?

Uefa is concerned by the relative strength of the club game and sees this as a means to redress the balance.

But, perhaps more importantly, broadcasters have committed to a package that runs until 2022. Who wouldn’t watch Germany playing Spain in a competitive final in an otherwise fallow football summer?

There have even been murmurs that Fifa is enthused enough by the plans to be considering a global equivalent.

But in reality, the changes will have little real effect on the top-tier nations – save a handy safety net should they mess up qualification – as their glamour friendlies are simply replaced with a more codified competition against the same elite countries.

But for those for whom qualification is a dream rather than an expectation, this provides a significant glimmer of hope.

“It is a new competition and like every newborn it takes time to establish itself, settle down and be recognised, but we think we have good ingredients for success,” said Marchetti.

“This will turn most of the friendlies into competition matches and that will be a much better proposition for fans.”

The groups:

Captain Marvel

type

Movie

release date

03/08/19

performer

Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Jude Law

director

Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck

Producers

Marvel Studios

distributor

Disney

Genre

Superhero

For more on Captain Marvel, pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly on stands Friday, or buy it here now. Don’t forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.

When Jude Law signed on for a starring role in Captain Marvel, he got a little guidance from one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most veteran and central figures: Robert Downey Jr.

“He had just done the first Iron Man when we first worked together,” Law explains. “So I’ve sort of followed his journey and relationship with Marvel throughout, really.”

Law and Downey starred together in the 2009 Sherlock Holmes and its 2011 sequel, and they’re set to return for a 2020 follow-up. The longtime friends saw each other shortly before Law began filming Captain Marvel, and Downey gave him a little insight into what to expect from his foray into the MCU.

“I don’t know that he ever gave me any advice, but he obviously had a great time making these,” Law says. “He talked a little bit about how [making a Marvel movie is like] fitting this one piece into a bigger picture that someone else has got their eyes on, and giving yourself over to that. It’s not about trying to understand everything. Just do your piece.”

And Law is a key piece of Captain Marvel. Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s superhero epic centers on Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), a human pilot with alien Kree DNA. When the film begins, Carol is living on the Kree planet of Hala, and she’s a part of the specialized military team known as Starforce — essentially the Seal Team Six of space.

Its members include Carol, Djimon Hounsou’s Korath (returning from Guardians of the Galaxy), and Gemma Chan’s sniper Minn-Erva. Law’s character is the leader of the group (the filmmakers declined to reveal his name), and he’s Kree to the core.

“He is driven by a belief in the divine leadership of the Kree people,” Law says. “So he’s almost a devout warrior — unquestioning, conservative, but inspirational.”

Audiences have met the Kree before in Guardians of the Galaxy, but Captain Marvel is a deeper dive into Kree society. They’re an advanced alien race that value community over individuality and they’re at war with their most hated enemy: the Skrulls. Two of the MCU’s most well-known Kree will be returning for Captain Marvel — Lee Pace’s Ronan and Hounsou’s Korath — but at this point in time, neither has splintered off to become the outcast terrorists they are in Guardians of the Galaxy. Ronan is still a respected figure on Hala, and Korath is a valued member of Starforce.

But of all the Starforce members, Law’s character is particularly close to Carol, whom he views as a mentee and pet project. “These extraordinary powers she has, he sees them as something of a blessing and something that she has to learn how to control,” Law says. “That’s a motif throughout the piece, the element of learning to control one’s emotions and to use your powers wisely.”

“There’s a lot and back and forth that comes with the two of them, which kind of creates a little bit of tension with the rest of Starforce,” Larson adds. “Like, ‘Why do they have a special relationship, and why isn’t it me?’”

Law has played crime-solving doctors and young popes and — very soon — a certain Hogwarts headmaster, but Captain Marvel is his first superhero movie. And according to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, it’s been a long time coming.

“He’s somebody we have admired for a long time and have wanted to find a role for in our movies, and as fate works in your favor, his part in this is extraordinary,” Feige tells EW. “He really came to play.”

For Law, Captain Marvel presented a chance to join a franchise he’s long admired — particularly in recent years, as the studio has made an effort to hire independent directors with distinct voices.

“It just seemed like an interesting party to join in with at an interesting time in their ascendancy,” he says. “That to me is an interesting playground to work in because suddenly you’ve got filmmakers who are looking at humor and script work and character, within an infrastructure that is obviously capable of creating enormous universes and worlds and special effects — while also not bogging down the creativity of the director.”

For more on Captain Marvel, check out EW’s cover story on the film — on stands Friday.

Vanilla Ice says he was caught up in the quarantine of an Emirates airline flight detained at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport Wednesday, after many aboard fell ill.

“So I just landed in New York coming back from Dubai and now I’m stuck on the runway with like 1000 police, ambulances, fire trucks, this is crazy,” the “Ice Ice Baby” rapper wrote in a Facebook post, sharing footage of the scene filmed from a plane window. 

Vanilla Ice, whose real name is Robert Matthew Van Winkle, also tweeted that he was “happy I’m up top” of the double-deck Airbus, as he believed the sick passengers were below. 

As many as 100 passengers, including some crew members, “complained of illness, including cough and some with fever,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Ultimately, 19 people were deemed “sick,” according to Eric Phillips, spokesman for New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio.

Vanilla Ice also shared his account in an interview with WPBF-TV in West Palm Beach, Florida.

“Well, today was exciting,” the 50-year-old mused. “I flew 14 hours into New York from Dubai, and basically it was chaos right when we landed. The pilot comes on, he says, ‘Well, we got a little health issue. People are sick.’

“I’ve been on planes before where people have been sick,” he continued. “They usually come on with a paramedic and then they’ll take the person off. Then I look out the window, and I’m like ‘Oh my gosh!’ “

Vanilla Ice said what he saw outside his window made him aware of how urgent the situation was. “When we started looking out the windows, we were like ‘This is much bigger than what the pilot just made it out to be. This is real serious,” he said.

Describing how he left the plane, Vanilla Ice said he and the other first-class passengers were shuttled from their cabin on the top deck of the plane down through a special exit and put in buses to avoid infection.

“I fly around the world all the time, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said.

USA TODAY has reached out to Vanilla Ice for comment.

Contributing: Ben Mutzabaugh

More: ‘I knew something was wrong’: Emirates passenger shares experience on flight with sick passengers

More: Emirates airline: What happens next after passengers fell ill on Dubai-New York flight

More: The dirtiest place at the airport is in the security line, study says

 

 

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The Associated Press
Published 7:29 a.m. ET Sept. 6, 2018 | Updated 9:08 a.m. ET Sept. 6, 2018